Field of the Invention
Embodiments relate generally to activating or enabling a feature, particularly a promotional feature, upon occurrence of a trigger event, including pausing live video, and more particularly to prompting a user to pause live video on the occurrence of an event.
Background Art
Service providers frequently offer customers additional features, above and beyond a tier of service to which the customer subscribes, for an additional fee. As selling such additional features is advantageous, it is often desirable for the service provider to effectively promote the feature to its customers. Alternatively, it may be desirable for a service provider to familiarize its customers to a new or existing feature they have, which is not widely known, appreciated or understood.
A common technique used by providers to promote features or services is a free preview. For example, a cable television provider might make a premium channel such as HBO or Showtime temporarily available to non-subscribers, in order to promote those services, and encourage customers to subscribe to them. This technique can be effective, but it has the downside of offering a very limited, and finite, period of time for customers to evaluate and consider the service. Furthermore, this technique works well for services such as broadcast linear television channels, where suddenly having many new customers using the services does not create any scaling issues. It is potentially problematic, however, if the services being promoted are on-demand services, where additional users create additional resource requirements. In this case, implementing a free preview period may require the service provider to build out expensive new infrastructure to support demand that is much higher than is required for normal operation. Alternatively, the free preview may create demand at a level that cannot be satisfied by existing infrastructure, creating a bad customer experience that undermines the promotional intent.
The conventional Digital Video Recorder, or DVR, is a one type of service that can be offered by multi-channel video providers, such as a cable providers. DVRs can provide a user/viewer with the ability to pause live video and/or audio, including live television, for example, using a specialized set-top box (STB) deployed at the user's home. DVR capability can also be implemented remotely from the user, for example at the headend of a network video system configured to provide video. This type of DVR is referred to herein as a remote storage DVR or RS-DVR system. In contrast to conventional DVR systems, which store programs locally, RS-DVR systems store video remotely from the user. One such network RS-DVR is described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/055,795 (“the '795 application”), filed on Mar. 26, 2008, which is entitled “Digital Video Recording with Remote Storage.” The '795 application is incorporated by reference in its entirety.
In conventional DVR and RS-DVR systems, a user must determine at what point it would be desirable to pause live video/audio/television. For example, a user may decide to manually pause live video when the user becomes aware of an event (e.g., doorbell chime, telephone ring). To decide, the user determines whether an event has occurred (if possible), and identifies details of the event (if possible) and whether the event merits the user's attention.
Accordingly, a user may reduce a volume level of live video, to enable the user to listen for an event, for example, resulting in self-imposed diminished enjoyment of live video. Even with such precautions, the user may suffer diminished enjoyment of the live video, due to preoccupation over whether an expected event will be missed while watching live video. The user may also be unable to identify details of an event that the user notices, forcing the user to guess at whether to pause live video based on incomplete information regarding the event. A user may pause live video for the purpose of determining additional details of the event, only to discover that the event does not merit attention or pausing of the live video. A user may place such priority on some types of events such that the user will always prefer to pause live video, and therefore desire the ability to configure a system to automatically pause upon the occurrence of such a high-priority event.
Additionally, users of non-DVR video systems, including non-DVR network video systems, typically do not have the option to pause live video. When an event occurs while viewing live video in a non-DVR video system, a user must determine whether to attend to the event and therefore become distracted from, or miss entirely, the live video.
Furthermore, users of DVR and non-DVR systems can become engrossed in live video and fail to become aware of an event that the user would otherwise be capable of perceiving. The user may enjoy live video at a volume level that masks the sound of an event, thereby rendering the event imperceptible to the user. The user may simply fail to perceive, or fail to become aware of, an event, for various reasons, while viewing live video.
What is needed is a more effective technique to promote features and services, including those related to DVR functionality, to consumers, avoiding the pitfalls of the above-described techniques.
The present embodiments will now be described with reference to the accompanying drawings. In the drawings, like reference numbers may indicate identical or functionally similar elements.